


with all my love (from somewhere in the void of space)

by ussihavelovedthestarstoofondly



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-18
Updated: 2018-05-18
Packaged: 2019-05-08 11:22:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14693166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ussihavelovedthestarstoofondly/pseuds/ussihavelovedthestarstoofondly
Summary: James Tiberius Kirk is six when Winona Mara Kirk is thirty, and when she walks away from him for the first time.It’s six months into Winona’s three-year tour when she writes Jim the first letter. When she writes down the words she’ll never be strong enough to say.





	with all my love (from somewhere in the void of space)

         James Tiberius Kirk is six when Winona Mara Kirk is thirty, and when she walks away from him for the first time. She knows its wrong, so damn wrong, to leave six-year-old Jim and nine-year-old Sam with her brother, Frank, but she did it anyway, and ran. Ran from her six-year-old husband. Ran from the memories slowly suffocating her in that house. Ran to the blackness of space, where the absence of air was the only thing that made it so she could breathe, ran to space where the freezing temperatures and slowly recycled air made it feel like maybe, just maybe, there wasn’t so much ice in her heart. Maybe, if she stayed here long enough, the ice her husband put there would melt enough that she could look at Jim without her heart shattering all over again.  
***  
         It’s six months into that three-year tour when Winona almost breaks and calls Jim and Sam. Almost. But she doesn’t. Because what should she say? “I left because you look just like your father, a man neither of you knew?” “I left because it was easier than confronting my grief?” “I left because I couldn’t stand to watch the chasms between us grow any wider?” “I left to kill our relationship before you had the chance to kill it yourselves?” There wasn’t anyway she could say it to their faces. No way she could resist them begging her to come home. If they even wanted to her to come home.  
It’s six months into Winona’s three-year tour when she writes Jim the first letter. When she writes down the words she’ll never be strong enough to say. She doesn’t know that it’s something she won’t ever stop doing.  
          _My dear Jim,_  
 _You don’t know how much I wish things were different. It should have been me who died on the Kelvin. Jim you will never know how sorry I am. I know those are hollow words to you. Words don’t mean anything, something I taught you all too early. I made too many promises to you that I knew I couldn’t keep. Wouldn’t keep. If I could change anything, and we both know I cannot, I would have your father live. I would take his place. He would have been able to take care of you and Sam. He would have moved on without me. I’m sure if I had taken the psychiatrist Starfleet offered me, I should have taken that offer, maybe I could tell you why that is. But I can’t. All I can say is to repeat hollow words to you: I am sorry. I will always be sorry, for so many things._  
 _With all my love from the USS Potemkin,_  
 _Winona_  
***  
_My Dear Jim,_  
 _You were on Tarsus IV. I cannot reach you. No one can. What else is there to say? Words are just ink on paper, after all. They cannot heal the holes he tore in you. The holes I tore in you._  
 _With all my love from the Denobula Triaxa system,_  
 _Winona_  
***  
_My Dear Jim,_  
 _You have no idea how proud it makes me that your cheated circumvented highlighted the fundamental problem with the Kobayashi Maru. The test doesn’t make you face death. You know that. No test will every compare to death. It is not an accurate representation of how a future captain will react to death. Illogical, don’t you think, since Vulcans strive for accuracy?_  
 _I am so sorry that I do not know the full story of what you did on Vulcan, of how you got on the ship, and saved the planet, and kept Pike alive. I am sorry that I do not know, and never will, because I don’t want to be proud of the hero of Earth, I want to be proud of my son. I know I gave up that right when I walked out, but that is my shame and guilt to bear. I am glad you have Pike. I’m glad he gave you what George and I could not. You will always have a proud mother._  
 _With all my love from USS Yorktown,_  
 _Winona_  
***  
         She’s 57 when walks down the halls of Starfleet Medical again. She really, really doesn’t want to remember the last time she was here. He is 33. But she can’t stay away. Not when she knows. Not when she threatened some of his traumatized crew for the information. She stops inside the room. The glass between them is now as literal as it has ever been figurative. She drops her forehead against it, tightening her fingers around the hat she’s holding. After funeral of Admiral Christopher Pike, Winona Kirk is getting very tired of burying people she loves because of bat shit crazy men.  
If the hazel-eyed man is surprised to see her, he doesn’t show it.  
         “I won’t be here long. You won’t have to deal with me.” The man sighs, and sinks into the chair at the flimsy table.  
         “You could stay. Talk to him. Be a parent.” Doctor Leonard McCoy replies. She just sighs.  
         “I couldn’t stay when he was kid. Why do you think I’d stay now?” Leonard, or ‘Bones’, as Jim calls him, stares at her. There’s nothing accusing in it though, but she’s pretty sure that’s just because he’s too tired.  
         “Maybe because your son died?” He offers. She shakes her head.  
         “He’s not my son. I’m just a genetic donor. We just buried his only parent. You his best friend. I assumed he would have told you that.” She doesn’t bother looking at the doctor, instead opting to stare at the boy on the other side of the glass.  
         “You talk to each other though,” Leonard says.  
         “No. Not really. I talk to George’s ghost. He talks to the mother he wanted.” She spins around on her heel. The doctor looks slightly taken aback.  
         “Thank you. For keeping him alive longer than his father. He deserves better than what his father got.” Then she spins again, toward the door, and takes off as fast as acceptable for a Starfleet Commander.  
***  
         Two weeks later, she’s three days out from space dock and a message on her terminal is beeping when she gets back from her shift.  
          **LHMCCOY27- He’s awake.** She doesn’t bother with a response, instead she sits down an writes another letter.  
          _My Dear Jim,_  
 _You died. It was terrifying. You are not your father’s son. If anyone had ever bothered to look, that would have been obvious. Your father was a brave man, one who would have been unbelievably proud of you, but he wouldn’t have walked into that warp core. I don’t think I would have either._  
 _As a failure of a mother, and having utterly failed in teaching what love and family are, I hope you understand now. Your crew is your family. They banded together to save you, and they will never stop doing just that. Let them teach you what your family didn’t. Let them make you strong where I made you weak. Don’t shut them out because I failed you._  
 _With all my love from the USS Potemkin,_  
 _Winona_  
***  
          _My Dearest Jim,_  
 _You are 35. You have saved Earth twice, Starbase Yorktown, and your crew countless times. You are a hero._  
 _You are also the little boy I have failed. You are not the six-year-old I left standing on the porch in Riverside. You are not the broken young man I saw for only two months after Tarsus IV. I could not be more proud of you._  
 _I wish I could be proud of you as your mother, and not as another Starfleet Officer, not as someone who still has a home on Earth because of the actions of you and your crew._  
 _Keep saving lives, but try not to die in space, please. I do not want to lose all my family to the terrible thing that space can be._  
 _With all my love from the USS Excalibur,_  
 _Winona_  
***  
 _My Dear Jim,_  
 _You are 35. It’s November. You got married today to your Doctor. My baby. I remember the last time I laughed it was because of you. Your mechanical train had stopped working. I can’t remember why now. But you were so mad. You couldn’t have been older than three. You just glared at that train, and Sam told you your face was going to get stuck like that. You just looked straight at me, and politely demanded my toolset because you were going to take the train apart and put it back together until it worked. I don’t know why I though it was so funny. It was the last time I laughed though._  
 _You should have grown up in a house filled with laughter. If you and your husband adopt children, I am sure their house will be filled with laughter. Learn from my mistakes, Jim. Do not love your husband more than your children._  
 _With all my love from the Garo IIV System,_  
 _Winona_

***  
         The Potemkin is seven weeks from officially being retired from the fleet. Winona Kirk is seven weeks from officially accepting and receiving her promotion to Admiral and her ground posting. Winona Kirk is 63 when her ship suffers major warp core malfunction. She’s suddenly very glad she left the box of letters in the farm house in Iowa. James Tiberius Kirk has been married to Leonard “Bones” McCoy for six years.  
         She and her team know there’s nothing they can do. She has time to send one message. It will already be out on subspace channels when the ship explodes. It doesn’t hurt nearly as much as she thought it would when the dilithium crystals finally give out, and the wrap engines explodes. It’s almost poetic, she thinks, that she George both die in exploding ships.  
***  
         Leonard doesn’t comment on how his husband’s hand’s shake as he opens the message from a WMKirk03. A message that had come in minutes after Starfleet’s notification of Familial passing had come by. They would not tell Jim how she had died.  
          **My Dearest Jim,**  
 **It is not fair to ask this of you. It is not fair to ask you to receive the flag of a woman who was not your mother. It is not fair to you or your husband, to tie you more firmly to the tragedy that seems to follow the family name. This is your choice. If you so wish, you may bury me as Officer Without Family. It would be fitting, as I have not been family to you.**  
 **Regardless as to your decisions for the arrangement of my funeral, the house in Riverside is yours to do with as you please. If you choose to get rid of it, or burn it, or raze it, grab the old shoe box on the counter. It’s for you. It’s not a pair of shoes.**  
 **With all my love from somewhere in the void of space,**  
 **Winona.**  
***  
“Why Bones? Why?” Jim ask his husband through quiet sobs, letters, actual paper letters, saying what his mother never could: I love you.  
“She was trying to apologize, Jim. She loved you. She just didn’t know how.”


End file.
